BRONXVILLE, N.Y. - When a sanitary sewer in Bronxville becomes blocked in the middle of the night, Public Works employees are forced to investigate the location first instead of beginning work on the problem.

The lack of a digital map makes work on the system more dangerous, difficult and time-consuming, Public Works Superintendent Rocco Circosta said.

At the Nov. 28 meeting of the Board of Trustees, Circosta outlined the department's Capital Improvement Plan for 2012-13. It totals just more than $5.1 million, up from last year's adopted plan of $1.6 million. One of the new plan's requests was for $30,000 to map out Bronxville's sanitary sewage system digitally.

"This year, I have asked for some additional funding to begin a comprehensive analysis of our sanitary sewers," Circosta said. "The first phase of this work would be to map out our system through field GPS units. Once we have our manholes mapped with locations, pipe elevations and sizes, then we could generate electronic mapping that can be further developed. This work would then lead into providing a geographic information system which can be used to analyze flow data, inflow/infiltration and pipe constrictions, all of which would be used for future capital projects."

The current maps of the sanitary sewage system are hand-drawn on paper. They don’t contain relevant information on sewage locations that would help workers during an emergency. In contrast, a digitally mapped out system would show every manhole and its information on a computer screen. Public Works employees could scroll over every location to see its information and instantly track where there is a problem.

The job would be outsourced and require workers to visit each manhole in Bronxville and input its data on a computer program, Circosta said.

“The goal is to have a village-wide sanitary sewage system digital map," he said. "Having our workers go to a location blind to what they're getting into at any time is dangerous and inefficient. When there is a problem, especially when that problem occurs at night, it needs to be fixed as soon as possible to retain a smooth flow."